Karan Johar hosted a party at his home on Sunday night, April 24, in honour of Bela Bajaria, Netflix's vice president, International Originals.
No knowing if Bela's visit to Mumbai was planned earlier or was an SOS trip scheduled after Netflix's stocks were pounded on Wall Street last week after the streamer announced it had lost 200,00 subscribers for the first time in its existence. Worse, Netflix believes it will lose 2 million subscribers this quarter.
Reed Hastings, Netflix's joint CEO, who previously rejected an ad-supported model for his service, now says he is open to a cheaper, ad driven Netflix model even though it won't happen for the next year or two.
There is also a buzz that Netflix will cut budgets on many projects -- an episode of Stranger Things, for instance, costs $30 million! Bridgerton, on the other hand, costs $7 million an episode.
Netflix also intends to make password sharing much more difficult. 'In addition to our 222 million paying households, we estimate that Netflix is being shared with over 100 million additional households, including over 30 million in the UCAN region [US and Canada],' Netflix complained in its letter to shareholders last week.
The only note of good cheer for Netflix has come from Asia where the service actually registered growth. Though South Korea with its abundance of K dramas is Netflix's primary Asian creative target, its India operations -- currently running behind Disney Hotstar (which has the attractive Indian cricket franchise) and Amazon Prime -- must boom if the folks at Netflix HQ in Los Gatos, California, need to stop having sleepless nights.
Netflix's Indian originals, barring maybe an odd one like the first season of Sacred Games, haven't done as well as Amazon Prime's The Family Man, Mirzapur, Pataal Lok, so Bela Bajaria will be anxious to get Indian shows that can replicate the magic of the Korean made Squid Games, Netflix's all-time blockbuster.
Dunno if pitching one's hopes on Karan Johar will pay off, but when your jalopy is traveling down a cul de sac, you will try anything, eh Bela?
Please click on the images for a look at the guests for Karan's bash for Bela.
IMAGE: Ranveer Singh.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Ranveer with Bela Bajaria.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Sara Ali Khan waves to the photographers.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Say Hi to Kriti Sanon.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Alia Bhatt's Gangubai Kathiawadi will stream on Netflix from April 26.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Ananya Panday.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Farhan Akhtar, whose Excel Entertainment produced Inside Edge and Made In Heaven for Amazon Prime, puts in an appearance.
His sister Zoya and her producing partner Reema Kagti are adapting the Archie comics for Netflix, starring Suhana Khan, Khushi Kapoor and Agastya Nanda.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Madhuri Dixit made her OTT debut in Netflix's The Fame Game.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Dr Sriram Nene is always around his missus.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Producer Siddharth Roy Kapur's crime thriller Aranyak released on Netflix.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Can there be a Karan Johar party without Manish Malhotra?
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Shashank Khaitan directed one of the segments in the Netflix anthology Ajeeb Daastaans.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Pramita Tanwar and her husband Producer Dinesh Vijan, whose Abhishek Bachchan-Nimrat Kaur-Yami Gautam starrer Dasvi streams on Netflix.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Stree Director Amar Kaushik.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
IMAGE: Dharma CEO Apoorva Mehta.
Photograph: Pradeep Bandekar
